Angel Eyes (34 page)

In twenty minutes they were back in front of the udon parlor. In the rear, the gambling was still going full force, Honno thought they might have been gone five minutes rather than five hours. The place stank of stale cigarette smoke and staler bodies. The atmosphere of frenzy had not abated, and with a quick contraction of her stomach, she remembered her father. How many nights had he spent on his knees throwing away money in just such a gambling house? More than there were trees in the forests of Yoshino. His fate had been death by obsession, a finding no coroner could ever make, but it was the truth, nonetheless.

The same shirtless Yakuza knelt on the floor, their fantastic irizumi sheened with sweat, the same players pushed their packets of money onto the center of the low tables. Though the long night was near its end, the players were not weary. On the contrary, their eyes were fever-bright, their nerves at hair-trigger level.

Though their victory was still as far away as it had been when the night began, they saw it as being closer than ever. This was the dangerous delusion of their obsession, the one that always took them down, now, soon, or later. It didn't matter, because that one end would come, inevitably, tragically.

Honno focused on the senior vice-president of administration for Kaga without Fukuda having to tell her. He had just lost another round and was scrabbling in his pocket. He pulled out a pad, wrote out another marker, signed it. How many did that make tonight? How much money did the pile of markers, in concert, represent? My God, Honno thought, how often can he afford to do this?

The Kaga senior vice-president passed his marker, and he followed it with his avid eyes as it made its way from Yakuza to Yakuza, all the way down the table, until it came to rest before the bald man with the dragon tattooed on his gleaming skull. The dragon man did not even look at the marker. Instead, his gaze rose to meet Fukuda's.

Fukuda made no move. She whispered to Honno, "What would you have me do? Accept Kaga's marker or turn it down?''

"I haven't any of the facts," Honno said.

"They're irrelevant," Fukuda said. "Yes or no. Tell me."

"I don't know what to do."

"Yes," Fukuda said. "You know as well as I do what must be done. It is time you took the responsibility for it. Your warrior's spirit needs responsibility in order to survive and to flourish."

Honno stared from the dragon man to the Kaga official. She should have been thinking of her father, of his terrible agony, the suffering of his family, and perhaps she was, but hardly in the way she had expected. She found that she harbored no sympathy for the Kaga man. This was his obsession, and she knew from bitter experience that he was already too far gone to be helped. Besides, she discovered, much to her surprise, that she had no desire to help him. She saw her father's obsession, his fate now from a different window, and like the moonlight being chopped to bits on the face of the Sumida River, there were other realities besides the one that she had been living all her life. And in this last moment of indecision, she understood everything she had seen tonight, every cryptic sentence Fukuda had spoken. Now nothing was cryptic, all was revealed, and there was no longer indecision.

"Take his marker," the warrior with Honno's voice said.

Fukuda nodded, and the dragon man pocketed the marker, slapped three thick stacks of yen on the table. They made their way to the Kaga senior vice-president, who was already devouring them with his eyes.

The Mercedes pulled up in front of the unobtrusive entrance to Big Ezoe's club in the Ginza at three minutes to six. The rain had been blown away on a freshening breeze from the east. Dawn was already painting the sky high above Tokyo's towers a dove gray, the exact hue of Fukuda's suit.

"You're not going in with me," Honno said.

"No," Fukuda said. "I have other work to see to now."

"Will I see you again?"

The driver had come around, opened Honno's door.

"That will be entirely up to you, Mrs. Kansei," Fukuda said. "The power is yours. Your fate is in your own hands."

And Honno, stepping out into the brightening Tokyo dawn, thought, At last.

*

"We've found him," Big Ezoe said as Honno walked into the granite-clad restaurant.

"Do you mean Giin is still alive?" Honno slipped into the chair opposite him. ''Has he been harmed?''

Big Ezoe laughed. "Your university professor is very much alive, Mrs. Kansei, and quite unharmed." He shrugged. "Why shouldn't he be? There was no one to hurt him."

''I don't understand.''

Outside, sunlight was spreading downward, across the faces of Shinjuku's gigantic office towers. The nocturnal denizens among whom Honno had walked just hours ago would already be back in their lairs, sleeping, waiting again for the return of night. She was reminded of that lone cryptomeria, stark, bent in pain, an oblique counterpoint to the endless right angles of the city, and she wanted to return to it, to somehow pay homage to it, so that its suffering should continue to have meaning.

"Your friend Giin is a clever boy," Big Ezoe said. "He engineered his own kidnapping."

Big Ezoe must have already ordered, because breakfast arrived, American-style: orange juice, eggs, bacon, corn muffins, black coffee. Honno had never seen so much food at breakfast, but she found that she was famished.

She should have been surprised by what Big Ezoe was telling her, but somehow she seemed inured to surprise. The warrior's spirit, having surfaced, was now gaining ascendancy.

"Giin merely used the kidnapping as a way to disappear for a little while without you clinging to his coattails," Big Ezoe continued. "When he had made his plans and was ready to implement them, he surfaced. In the middle of my world. That was the easiest part, since he was already something of an habitue."

Big Ezoe looked at her. "You're taking this news with a great deal more equanimity than I expected, Mrs. Kansei. Didn't Giin swear to you that he had given up gambling, that he had put his past behind him?"

"He did. But then my father said the same thing to my mother. Many times."

''You seemed more than willing to believe your friend several nights ago."

Honno considered this. It occurred to her that several nights ago seemed more like a lifetime ago. She looked at Big Ezoe, said, "He wants to sell back the Sakata ledgers he stole from me."

"Yes," Big Ezoe said. "And no. I think he wants-needs-money very badly. His debts in my gambling houses have mounted of late. But I also think he's too smart to give up the ledgers for one score. He's had a chance to decipher Sakata's code. That's why it took him this long to surface with an offer. Now he knows what the ledgers contain, and he has no doubt discovered that they're far too valuable for him to give up."

"What does he plan to do?"

"Figure it out," Big Ezoe said. "It isn't so difficult."

Honno thought for a moment. "He's going to try to take our money and give us nothing-or, perhaps, just a little-in return."

Big Ezoe said, "Like all amateurs, Giin believes that he can outsmart the professional. That's a proven fact. Why else would he come back night after night to my gambling houses? He has set up a meeting for eight this morning, in the center of the Nihonbashi bridge. I will bring him the money, and he will give me one deciphered page from the ledgers. Then, when I'm satisfied as to their value, he'll give me an address where I'll supposedly find the entire ledgers, along with the rest of the decoded pages. Only they won't be there, and he'll begin the process of bleeding me dry."

"But that's so terribly dangerous for him."

"It certainly is," Big Ezoe said, "but in a way he doesn't yet begin to suspect. He's chosen to deal with me. That's because he knows me-or, at any rate, he thinks he does. In fact, he's very close to the edge, and in danger of falling a long, long way.

"You see, Mrs. Kansei, what Giin hasn't counted on is you."

''You loved Giin, once,'' Big Ezoe said in the tone one would use when beginning a fairy tale. "But now your warrior spirit has shown you that it wasn't Giin you loved at all, but an image of Giin. An image your own needs, desires, and misconceptions created. Just as they created the Eikichi Kansei you thought you had married. There, too, the truth was something altogether different."

Honno and Big Ezoe were in his limo, on their way to Nihonbashi. They passed through a city that looked as if it were waking up from a long, troubled slumber.

"What do you plan to do?" Honno said.

"I?" Big Ezoe looked at her. "I plan to do nothing at all."

The limo pulled into the curb, and the driver got out. In a moment Honno's door was opening. The driver handed her a slim attache. It came as no surprise to this new Honno. She emerged into the busy street.

She said, "What is in the case? "But, really, it was a question to which she already had the answer. She could hear Fukuda saying. Whatever you want to be in there, and the warrior with Honno's voice repeated the answer out loud.

Behind her, she heard Big Ezoe's voice saying, "I will remain here until the matter is resolved."

Without a backward glance, Honno walked onto the bridge. Centuries ago the Nihonbashi had been the starting point of the Tokaido, the main road between the capital-Edo, now Tokyo-and Kyoto. She recalled as a child seeing the stylized rendition of the Nihonbashi in a woodblock print by Hiroshige. Perhaps it was at that moment, engulfed by the beauty of the artist's work, the point where myth and reality converged, that she had fallen in love with Tokyo.

Eight o'clock. Giin was at the center of the bridge's are, waiting. Behind him all of Honno's beloved Tokyo was arrayed like a set of runes whose meaning she had at last begun to decipher.

He saw her coming and his face went white. He turned to run, then he hesitated, his greed gaining the upper hand, and he turned back. And Honno was already there.

"Why did you run?" she asked turn. "Why did you steal the ledgers?"

''You don't understand,'' Giin said hurriedly. ''I need money. Desperately."

'' You could have asked me for money.''

He laughed. ''Don't be absurd. I need a great deal more than you could ever have.''

"How do you know that?" She saw Giin pause. "You should have asked."

Giin gave her a tentative smile. He bobbed his head. "Yes. I suppose I should, now that I think about it. But it was such a shock to see you, and I-well, I found myself so smitten again. It didn't matter that you'd married. I wanted everything to be perfect this time. For you, only for you, Honno. That's why I need the money. I need to get this behind me-this emergency-and then everything will be perfect."

Honno seemed not to have been listening. "You're still gambling."

"But I do not! I told you-''

"Why are you lying to me?"

"I swear-"

"You've always lied to me."

"'Honno, what's happened to you?"

"Nothing," she said. She lifted the attache case that contained nothing. "Money," she said. "To give you your perfect ending."

Giin nodded uncertainly. He handed a sheet of paper to Honno. "The information contained in the ledgers is fantastic. I can hardly believe it's true. But it must be. Every entry is cross-referenced several ways. Look. Times, places, numbers of meets, amounts transferred. The ledgers detail an entire network of bribes, extortion, a web of corruption so wide it's almost inconceivable."

"But to what end?"

Giin's smile widened. He sensed that for all this woman's new strangeness, he had regained the upper hand. "Ah, that will have to remain a mystery until I have the money, and you get the balance of the decoding.''

"I want it all now."

"Huh?"

"I want everything you've decoded," Honno said. Without warning, she reached out, brought Giin toward her with such fierceness that his teeth raided. "You'll tell me now, before the transfer of money, as an act of contrition for lying to me, and for stealing what is mine."

"You're mad," Giin said. "Absolutely mad. I've made my deal."

"You'll tell me what I want to know," Honno said. "Or I'll kill you right here, right now, as a public lesson, a reminder to those who lie and cheat and steal."

"I don't-"

"Your particular obsession has ended right here." Honno stuck her forefinger into that soft spot just below Giin's sternum. He winced, collapsed into her. Saliva drooled out of his gasping mouth.

"You've caused too many people far too much pain," Honno told him. The finger jammed inward again, and Giin's eyes opened so wide she thought the eyeballs would pop out. "I'm the one, little Honno, who you thought so little of, who you condescended to. I am going to put an end to it."

Once more the finger moved, curling upward toward his heart. "To your own suffering as well, since you are obviously incapable of helping yourself. You're just spiraling deeper and deeper into deceit and self-delusion."

Honno brought Giin so close against her she could hear the frightened beating of his heart. Her wa was fully expanded, and there was a peculiar triumph burning like a fire inside her. She thought of Fukuda and transformations. Was she, Honno, fully transformed by the warrior spirit? Not yet. But soon.

"I 'm going to break your back,'' she said. ''Not kill you, not yet. You thought I was still trapped by your spell, that you could con me yet again with your soft voice and your honeyed words. But I know what you are now; you have no effect on me. And I want what I want."

"But I don't know." Giin's voice was filled with pain and tears. "I've, oh no, over the years I've lost my abilities to decode. Age was playing . . . playing tricks on my mind. So I found a protege. He did the decoding. He. . . he has everything you . . . you want."

"Name," Honno said, tightening her hold. "Address."

Giin told her, his head lolling on her neck like an infant. And Honno, the warrior, was abruptly disgusted by his weakness-just as she had been disgusted by her father's weakness, she realized. All these years she had been too much the good girl, the Honno her parents had raised her to be, to question her own emotions, to recognize her disgust.